The heat death of the universe is a hypothesized long-term fate in which the continued expansion of the universe eventually disperses all matter and energy so thinly, and evens out temperature differences so completely, that no further thermodynamic work can be done and all physical processes effectively cease. It follows from applying the second law of thermodynamics, which holds that entropy in an isolated system tends to increase, to the universe as a whole over a timescale vastly longer than the current age of the universe. It remains one of several proposed ultimate fates, alongside scenarios such as the Big Rip and Big Crunch, and its likelihood depends on the still-uncertain long-term behavior of dark energy.
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